For thousands of years, marketplaces have provided a convenient forum for merchants and customers carry out trade. A modern marketplace, whether it is a bazaar in Turkey or a suburban shopping mall, still serves the basic function of bringing suppliers and purchasers together at one location. With the advent of the Internet and other communications technologies, it is no longer necessary for suppliers and purchasers to appear at the same physical location to carry out market transactions. Instead, it is becoming increasingly popular for purchasers and suppliers to conduct transactions via electronic exchanges. Examples of these electronic exchanges abound and include web sites such as auction sites, retail sales sites and so on. At electronic exchanges, a large number of purchasers can typically buy products from a number of competing suppliers and suppliers can receive purchase orders or bids for their products from a large number of potential purchasers, making electronic exchanges efficient for both suppliers and purchasers. Furthermore electronic exchanges can be convenient for both suppliers and purchasers because electronic exchanges provide a user-friendly forum at which to conduct transactions, and electronic exchanges are not typically subject to many of the constraints that limit traditional “brick and mortar” market forums, such as only being able to operate during regular business hours.
From a supplier's perspective, the efficiency and value of a particular market forum depends on the amount of information the supplier has about the transactions that occur at the forum. If the supplier has sufficient information, the supplier can attempt to maximize profits by applying revenue management techniques. By analyzing the transactions that occur at a market forum, the supplier can determine at which price to sell an item or service in order to garner the most profit. Current systems of analyzing transactions at electronic exchanges, however, only provide information to a supplier regarding the transaction in which that supplier participated. In such prior systems, each supplier would only see his own transactions and is not aware of the details of the competition. Thus, a supplier that employs current systems for analyzing transactions at electronic exchanges only has information about transactions in which that supplier participated and has limited information about the market as whole. Additionally, prior systems do not provide a scientific means to summarize the transactions such that they can be used for revenue management purposes. Because the supplier lacks meaningful revenue management information about the market as a whole, the supplier can not make fully informed pricing decisions, thus hindering the market efficiency of the electronic exchange.